EU selling bailout deal at too high a price: Cypriot FM

Cyprus says the economic burden that the European Union seeks to impose on the country for a bailout deal is “too high,” leading to “enormous difficulties” for the Cypriots.

“Europe is pretending to help us but the price to pay is too high: nothing less than the brutal destruction of our economic model which will cause enormous, long term difficulties for the Cypriot people,” said Cypriot Foreign Minister Ioannis Kasoulides in an interview with the French financial daily Les Echos published on Wednesday.

“We need to start from scratch, as in 1974, when our economy was leveled to the ground after the Turkish invasion,” Kasoulides added.

He made the remarks days after Nicosia and the EU reached a stringent bailout deal which included a tax of up to 40 percent on deposits of over 100,000 euros in Cyprus’s two biggest banks, a move which undermines the nation’s status as an offshore banking center.

“Nobody told us the truth or warned us…that the [bailout] talks would lead to such a sudden, radical and violent rupture of our economic model,” the Cypriot minister added.

Under the deal agreed in Brussels on March 25, Cyprus must raise 5.8 billion euros (USD 7.4 billion) to qualify for the full loan from the European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund and avoid bankruptcy.

Thousands of Cypriots have been demonstrating in the capital, Nicosia, to denounce their government, the EU and the IMF for their austerity plans.

On Thursday, Banks in Cyprus reopened to customers after a nearly two-week lockdown, with tight restrictions on transactions remaining in place to stop draining the island’s coffers after the rescue package deal.